Why Do I Feel Anxious?

One of the most common questions I get asked is, why do I feel anxious?

Someone will be sitting in my office for a free initial consultation or at their first hypnotherapy session. They’ll tell me about their racing, negative thoughts and how they always think the worst. They’ll tell me about the fast breathing, heart palpitations, sweating and other physical symptoms of anxiety. And they’ll then tell me that they don’t know why they feel anxious.

Often life is good and there is not an actual, factual reason for the anxiety. It’s frustrating. The same old thoughts and feelings going around and around. You know you don’t have anything to feel anxious about but it still happens. You may have spent hour after hour racking your brain to try and understand why you feel the way you do.

Logically there is probably no reason for you to feel anxious. Sometimes someone has experienced something, after which they started struggling with anxiety. In those sort of cases we can point to what started it.

Yet, for most people, the anxiety sort of starts and you don’t realise it is a problem until it is already a problem. Then you are stuck with the same habitual pattern of anxious thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions. Your brain is seeking to keep you safe but is overprotecting you because you already know there is no threat. This is where hypnotherapy can help. You can take back control over what is going on inside of your own head. You can start to feel more calm, confident and in control.

Changing Anxiety

Your anxiety may have started a long time ago, perhaps even in childhood. At that time you only had limited knowledge and experience of the world. Something may have been seen or heard that starts the process off. You could spend a long time going back over the past trying to find the cause. However, you can’t undo everything you have learnt and experienced since so you can never truly put yourself back there. Even if you did think you discovered the cause of why you feel anxious, you’d still only be guessing. Even when you think you know what started it, that doesn’t change anything about your anxious thoughts and feelings right now. The pattern of anxiety would rumble on regardless.

For other people, a build up of stress and worry from multiple things may have built up to a sort of psychological tipping point. Your brain then attaches the anxiety to whatever was going on at the final point. Everything that went before can be forgotten, yet the anxious pattern has developed. Again, even if you thought you knew what had contributed to your anxiety starting, it wouldn’t change anything now.

That’s why, through hypnotherapy, we take a look at what you do now. We delve into your anxious thoughts, feelings and behaviours as they are happening now so that we can work together to help you to change that habitual pattern. You can move from what you do and how you do it, to something that is all about being calm, confident and in control. When you are getting on with things how you want to in your life, why you used to feel the way you used to feel becomes redundant. When you are feeling good and getting on with life, you will be looking forwards and not backwards.

Why you feel anxious now is not really about some event in your past. You feel anxious because of your patterns of thinking and feeling that you (inadvertently) developed at some point in your life. As creatures of habit, your anxious thoughts and feelings continue to repeat. Your brain constantly searches for whatever the threat is that is making you anxious. It always finds something for you to feel anxious about. Your anxiety drives your imagination. And your imagination starts to scare you even more. You can even feel anxious that you might feel anxious.

Rather than focus on why you feel anxious, it is more helpful to focus on how you feel anxious. What are you imagining or saying to yourself in your head? Hypnotherapy for anxiety helps you to be able to interrupt, challenge, change and replace those negative thoughts. You can also ask what you are doing in your body. And then you can do things that help you to change how you feel.

You could spend a long time searching and searching for the why of anxiety. It is much easier to change a thought or to positively influence a feeling. And, of course, you can do things differently too.

And if you need some help to overcome anxiety and to feel more calm, confident and in control, then do get in touch, We can meet for a chat about how you can soon move from what you are doing now onto what you want to be doing. As all my reviews show (as does the science), you can soon start feeling better quickly and successfully.

To your health and happiness, 

Dan Regan

Anxiety Therapist in Ely & Newmarket

Could use some help to calm your anxiety? Struggling with anxiety, stress, worry and fear and need some help? Find out how I can help with a Complimentary Hypnotherapy Strategy Session. Learn more here: Appointments

Find out what hundreds of other people have said after their anxiety hypnotherapy sessions with Dan: Hypnotherapy Testimonials

And check out these popular and powerful hypnosis downloads that can start helping you right away with anxiety, confidence and more: Hypnosis Downloads